A Matter of Faith and Will
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: In which, in his search for God, Castiel comes across the strange woman Eleanor Lily Potter in England and the two discuss the universe, the end, faith, the demiurge, and the price and meaning of freedom. Side fic to "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus"


**Author's Note: This is a crossover of Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus and "Supernatural", you can get away without the latter but probably need the former. Also, NOT CANON**

* * *

 _"I don't have much time. We need to talk."_

 _"Okay?"_

 _"Your plan to kill Lucifer—"_

 _"Yeah, you want to help?"_

 _"No, it's foolish, it can't be done."_

 _"Oh, well, thanks for the support."_

 _"But I believe I have the solution. There is someone, besides Michael, strong enough to take on Lucifer, strong enough to stop the apocalypse."_

 _"And who's that?"_

 _"The one who resurrected me and put you on that airplane, the one who began everything, God. I'm going to find God."_

 _"God?"_

 _"Yes."_

 _"God?"_

 _"Yes, he isn't in heaven, he has to be somewhere."_

 _"Try New Mexico, I hear he's on a tortilla."_

 _"No, he's not on any flatbread."_

 _"Listen, Chuckles, even if there is a God he is either dead, and that's the generous theory—"_

 _"He is out there, Dean."_

 _"—Or, he's up and kicking, and he doesn't give a rat's ass about any of us. I mean look around you, man. The world is in the toilet! We are literally at the end of days here and he's off somewhere drinking booze out of a coconut! Alright—"_

 _"Enough, this is not a theological issue, it's strategic. With God's help we can win."_

 _"It's a pipe dream, Cas."_

 _"I killed two angels this week, my brothers. I'm hunted, I rebelled, and I did it, all of it, for you, and you failed. You and your brother destroyed the world and I lost everything for nothing. So, keep your opinions to yourself."_

* * *

2009: An angel, a woman, Kings Cross Station, and the impending end of the world

* * *

Dean's amulet glows white and damning between the pair of them, casting strange stark shadows on their faces, both clothed in mortal flesh that suits neither of them. Or, perhaps, it is that Jimmy Novak does not suit him for all that Castiel has worn him down and pushed him beyond all human limitations. Jimmy's hands are ill-fitting gloves for all that with each day that passes less and less of Jimmy seems to remain within him.

Jimmy shows the wear and tear of Castiel's rebellion.

Her vessel, if it is a vessel at all, seems strangely inhuman for all its humanity, as if the force of her presence has altered her flesh to contain her. Her skin is an unnatural pale that contains luminosity and none of the translucence one would expect from that shade, her eyes are an equally too green that Castiel has never seen in human eyes and reflected within them are Castiel's wings hidden beneath Jimmy's skin.

She gives him a wry smile, the kind that Dean perhaps one day could possess if he were older, wiser, and tempered by the battles of his youth. Her fingers, long and thin and pale, rest loosely on the handle of a cup of tea purchased along with turkey sandwiches at this small café inside the bustling station. When she speaks her voice is not worn down as his is, light grating upon human flesh, but in some undefinable note contains something of the divine which he simply cannot put his finger on, "Sorry for the lack of ambiance, it probably seems inappropriate to you but, well, I have this thing about trains."

It is both like and not like those jokes that Dean insists on making, where words are said and Castiel understands them all individually but fails to see how Dean is putting them together. Often, too often, they are references of Dean's world and childhood where Castiel will always be alien. Here, too, there is something missing, but by the distant pang of nostalgia in her eyes as she gazes out towards the hustling and bustling station, he thinks he is not supposed to understand it.

Neither of them, after all, are laughing.

So instead his hand, Jimmy's hand, twitches as he both wants to reach for her and not. He shudders in her presence, even in their thin disguises, and if he closes his eyes he can imagine he is basking in the light of a second sun. When he opens his mouth Jimmy's tongue is dry and leaden, yet he asks all the same, "Where have you been?"

"England since 1981, then 1942, 1945, and then…" she trails off, offering him a soft and sympathetic smile, as if she knows that this is not an answer he wished for but the only one she has to give.

His next question is harder, one that can only be put into a single desperate word, that word which had started him down this path of rebellion, doubt, and a longing for a universe free from fate. In it is that shining star of faith, no longer in heaven and his brothers, but instead in the structure of the universe and the divine creator. However, in it is well is the pit of despair that grows within his heart like a cancer, spreading and robbing him of grace inch by inch…

"Why?"

For a moment she says nothing, stares at her reflection in the tea and ignores both his eye and the light of the amulet, finally she says, "You have to understand that it's… I don't have the answer to those questions. If that's what you're looking for, Castiel, there is a man named Chuck you've left behind in America."

"Chuck?" he asks, because he knows a Chuck, certainly but that is not a face that he has come across on his self-prescribed quest.

"The prophet," she says and then with a darkly amused smile clarifies, "The Lord Creator, or the Demiurge, perhaps."

"Perhaps," he echoes, in a darker tone himself for all the weight that one word holds. Because if Chuck is God fled from the realm of heaven, then who is he speaking to now? A heretical demiurge or does that tile, perhaps, belong to someone else even.

"Perhaps," she echoes back, with such a softer, kinder, smile than his own. At once he feels haggard, worn, and so very old.

"It's probably for the best," she says with a slight shrug, again something that reminds him of Dean and Sam and that blasé show of casualness they often choose to wear, "I don't think you'd like the answers he'd give you."

He does not comment on that for the moment, does not think of what that might mean, and instead asks, "What answers can you give me?"

"I can tell you… unfortunate truths," she finally settles on, and finally, she looks him in the eye. It is alarming, he thinks, when she stares at him directly. There is nothing physically different about it, perhaps nothing even spiritually, but a part of him feels that God is not only looking at Jimmy Novak but Castiel hiding behind him like an errant child.

"The first is that the universe, one day, will end. The sun will expand, entropy slowly but surely robs the universe of energy and heat death approaches. Nothing in this world or any other can grasp eternity, not even you. It is an unfortunate side effect of planning when planning, sentience itself, was not even a concept."

She leans towards him, takes one of his hands in hers, and reminds him, "In the beginning there was nothing, and then, just like that, there was everything…"

In her voice is a note of yearning, of wonder, as if she too is still in awe of the universe and all it has to offer. As in awe as Castiel, even now, millennia later still is in the oddest of moments. That there should be so much in Earth and in heaven even as it is crumbling in his fingertips, even as his grace slips from him and he falls into despair, he still marvels at the colors of a sunset…

"And recklessness like that, free will if you will, has consequences."

At that he dares to look up, stares hard into her eyes even as he sees her lips quirk in understanding, as if she knows he has been looking for that word all along. As if that is the word that all righteous, all true, creatures should scour the earth and heavens for.

"The second," she says, now voice strangely amused and casual once again, "Is better news in that it doesn't have to end now and that I am, on the whole, very pro universe as well as pro free will and a supporter of the cause."

He opens his mouth, at first to gush in relief, but then stops himself and asks what Dean would in his place and what once Castiel would not have dared to even think, "Then why have you done nothing?"

"Oh contraire," she says, somehow anything but insulted, instead still a touch amused, as if she can see so far beyond what Castiel can. He is reminded oddly of many of the more aggravating conversations he has had with the Winchester brothers, where they insist that he has done nothing or has not done enough where if he had human hands they would be scraped raw and bleeding. He hates this parallel feeling and that he can both understand her and for once understand Dean and Sam in the same moment.

She continues as if she has not noticed his discomfort, "I have done more than you can possibly imagine, my friend. It is simply that my battlefield lies elsewhere, on higher planes than even yours."

Once, perhaps, that reassurance would have been enough, though he does not know how much higher of a plane one can get than the battle between heaven and hell, but that was before Castiel had learned doubt and the flicker of envy for a world of choices. It is not so easy, no, it is not desirable to fall back into the world where Castiel questioned nothing.

So, he instead insists, knuckles white as they curl into fists against the wood of the table, "And yet, the world will end without your intervention. If you don't stop Lucifer now—"

"Do I hear a lack of faith, my friend?" she asks, but holds up a hand before he can either deny or confirm it, "If you must know, the reason I can't intervene (and I can't speak for that bastard Chuck), is precisely because of what you're fighting for."

He draws back from her, blinking as she takes advantage of his silence to pick up her abandoned sandwich and bite into it. She looks so… odd when she does that. It's too mortal, too human, an action that he has seen Dean take many times but not one he could ever feel truly comfortable taking himself. There is a raw humanity in the way she so casually eats that belies what she truly is, what Dean's amulet has so clearly marks her as. Finally, voice raw and rasping, he states simply, "I do not understand."

"Well, think about it, Castiel," she says between bites, blinking at him equally owlishly and without any hint of guile, "What happens if I, if Chuck even, descends upon high to smite and send Lucifer and Michael into the pit?"

"The Earth is saved, the apocalypse averted, and mankind recaptures his future for himself," Castiel responds easily, and for a single moment of hope, he allows himself to picture it. The world after the end has come and gone and never been…

"Close, but no cigar," she says and then, all inhuman intensity once more, states, "God recaptures mankind's future for him."

He blinks, blinks again, tries to see what she is saying and then admits, "I still do not understand."

"It is not free will, Castiel, if God decides who should win and who should lose," she says and sets the sandwich down, folding her hands, "It is not free will if God decides anything or if He can even be looked to easily. Even if He merely sits as a figurehead on the throne of heaven, giving the illusion of meaning and stability in a universe where there is none, it's already too far gone."

Jimmy's jaw falls open, tasting the dust and dirt in the air, and he asks, hesitantly, "Are you saying—"

She interrupts before he can finish, "I am saying that this is what you're fighting for, Castiel. Not safety, not assurance, not happiness, not glory, but free will. Freedom is hard, it is terrifying, and it makes no promises for success or happiness. It is the promise of the pursuit of happiness and nothing more."

"But surely—"

"And just as you are free to rebel and turn your back on everything you once believed in," she continues, voice growing louder and reverberating not only through Jimmy's bones but the light of Castiel that hides within him, "They are free to follow to the letter the plan they think they've been given, to clutch at the semblance of destiny and the meaning and security it promises. They're free to end the world, you're free to save it, and if any of you are to have even the slightest chance at a world beyond the will of God then I can't help you."

She draws back, tucks hair behind her ear, and more quietly says, "So please, Castiel, don't ask."

He says nothing, squeezes his eyes shut and tries to contain the bitterness welling within him, the rage and despair and the knowledge that he has come to the end and that even God…

"And if I must ask?"

She says nothing for a moment and he sits there in self-imposed darkness and judgement. Then, suddenly, her hand is on his and warm once again. And her voice, he thinks in awe, sounds just as weary and strained as his own, "Then all I can do, Castiel, is ask that you think very carefully. If you call, I'll come, but remember where you came from and how far you've come since then. Remember what it will mean, if I, if Chuck, if anyone at all takes the throne again. Remember the plagues, the floods, and the cities of sand…"

She picks the amulet off the table and places it in his hand, closing his fingers over the hot surface as she insists, kindly and yet with gravitas, "Choose carefully, Castiel, and relish in the fact that you, above all others, have the freedom to choose."


End file.
